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Comments of the Week: Student Loans, Elizabeth Warren and the Affordable Care Act

Comments of the Week: Student Loans, Elizabeth Warren and the Affordable Care Act

Each week we post a run-down of the best of our reader comments with the hopes of highlighting some of your most valuable insights and encouraging more people to join the fray. Let us know what you think—in the comments!

April 6, 2012

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Each week we post a run-down of the best of our reader comments with the hopes of highlighting some of your most valuable insights and encouraging more people to join the fray. Let us know what you think—in the comments!

Kbrown2225: I had this happen recently. My graduate school refused to release my transcripts even though I am on a payment plan and had made my payments promptly every month. Their basic argument was that the plan they had agreed to did not include large enough payments. Fortunately for me the school I had graduated from was law school, so I had the knowledge and ability to fight them and get my transcripts.

I am not in default on my student loans and will continue to pay to the best of my ability, but between my wife and I we have close to $120,000 in student loan debt and since we are both in our forties and still struggling, I doubt if we will ever be able to pay it all off. Well, they cannot take away the knowledge we have gained and they can’t come after us once we are dead.

Charley James: A totally engrossing and informative article, thanks! I hope that her staff will, “Let Warren Be Warren” as the campaign develops. Having heard her speak once, long before she decided to run for the Senate, I’ve experienced how she connects with an audience – there were maybe 200 people at the speech I attended – when she just talks and doesn’t worry about “messaging” and “focus group points” or what handlers are telling Warren to say and how to say it.

As a campaigner, Ms. Warren reminds me of some of the really great politicians I’ve met and talked with over the years: JFK and both of his brothers, Hubert Humphrey, Reagan when he was governor of California, President Obama. No matter how short or long the exchange I had with them, no matter whether I was a teenager or an adult, regardless of how I was dressed at the time, each left me with the deep feeling that there wasn’t anything else they’d rather be doing at that particular moment than talking to me. Ms. Warren conveys that same connection.In response to E.J. Graff’s “Elizabeth Warren: Yes She Can?” April 3, 2012

King Schwarz: Even if I buy Aziz Huq’s claim that invalidating the individual mandate must be based on a "narrow reading" of the Commerce clause, I cannot see how ACA is worthy of support from progressives. Let’s bracket the premise of the mandate: that the federal government can compel citizens to buy designated corporate products. Huq says that’s okay because the feds already can "track, surveil and perhaps even detain" us under cover of national security. A weak defense, presuming that we resist rather than welcome such infringements of our liberty, but let’s let that go. What Huq does not say is that ACA, whether constitutional or not, is a very poor and partial solution to our affordable health-care issues. It does not confront the main driver of the disastrously high cost of health care: the very insurance industry whose reach into our lives is lengthened by ACA. Real progressives should support the invalidation of the act and its replacement by a single-payer plan. Huq makes clear that he is defending ACA and the individual mandate for partisan political reasons. Real progressives should put fairness and justice ahead of the political interests of any Presidential administration or political party.In response to Aziz Huq’s “Why the Affordable Care Act Does Not Put Your Freedom At Risk.” April 4, 2012

Dale Top: I think the only way things will change is if several groups come together. Saying one group is too much of the democratic party or another is too dependent on certain sponsors will only turn the OWS into a leftist version of the libertarians. There should be serious outreach to anyone who will stand together and fight back the corporations. The strongest walls are made of small bricks locked together.In response to Peter Rothberg’s “The 99% Spring.” April 4, 2012

bobbolink: Thank you, Greg, for reminding us that as citizens, we all have a responsibility to make our society as fair and just as we can. If nothing else, we need to remember that what we are seeing in the unjust treatment of poor people can happen to us, and will, if we don’t stop it in its tracks.

I use the term "just" purposely. We have been led to believe that charity is the only answer. I suggest that what we do is begin putting our energies into seeking justice rather than charity. There are lots of conservatives who will give money to shelters and volunteer. We need to be working harder for low-income housing, to put the shelters to rest. And as well as organizations, I would also like to suggest looking at our own areas, seeing what injustice exists there, and taking action on our own, rather than waiting for some organization to address that injustice.

An example of that is the small group of young people who saw the police in their town destroy the tents and other property of homeless people and documented it all. As a result, the cops responsible were fired, and there is a renewed sense of justice for ALL in that town.